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4000+ professionals in international education administration attended EAIE conference in Dublin. Overall, the conference had some interesting sessions, excellent keynotes and opportunity to network.
I co-presented three sessions at the conference on the themes of research, recruitment and collaborations:

1. Journeys of discovery in researching internationalisation of higher education:
This workshop was chaired by Hans de Wit, director of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI) of the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy. Other co-presenters were, Laura Rumbley, associate director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College and Gabriele Bosley, director, International Programs at Bellarmine University.

This was the workshop for practitioners who would like to integrate research in improving their work or even engage with doctoral work. It provided an overview of the state of research in internationliasation of higher education w…

London Met is now the poster-child of how frequently changing immigration policies coupled with institutional desperation for recruiting foreign students for revenue rationales could hurt future of many. Student are disillusioned and frustrated, London Met has lost its reputation and the UK has put at risk its credibility to attract international students in the immediate term. After tightening of student visa norms and requirement of interviews for international students, London Met fiasco is too detrimental for the UK higher education.

Growth of Chinese students enrolling in global higher education systems is no news. In my earlier post, I estimated that nearly 750,000 Chinese students apply to study abroad every year. However, the dramatic growth and increasing dependence on China becomes striking when put in perspective of enrollment change in the last decade.
In 2002, India was the leading source of international students enrolling nearly 67,000 students in American higher education institutions, followed by China with nearly 63,000 students. By 2011, number of Indian students grew by 55% to 104,000 and Chinese students grew by 150% to 158,000 students. This was also the period when Japanese enrollment dropped by 40% from 47,000 to 28,000.
Chinese enrollment did not grew at a rapid pace until 2008, when enrollment grew by nearly 20% for the first time and added 13,000 students. This was also the time when India was still the leading source country by a margin of 14,000 more students as compared to Chinese; Ko…

Given below is my recent article published in the Economic Times Blog on the need of a transparent and accountable higher education system to enhance quality and foster competition.

Indian higher education system has expanded at a break-neck speed. Nearly 20,000 colleges were added between 2000-01 and 2010-11 and the number of students enrolled doubled from nearly 8.4 million to 17 million in this decade, according to the University Grants Commission (UGC).

However, this much needed expansion came at the expense of quality. The number of seats remaining vacant in some disciplines like engineering, underemployment and unemployment among educated youth and incessant desire to collect more degrees for advancing career are some of the indicators of the inadequate quality of education imparted. In addition, we continue to hear cases of malpractices and corruption among regulators and institutions in compromising standards.